› added 12 years ago

147

TIL of Adwaita, a 255 year old tortoise that was born 26 years before the Declaration of Independence and died in 2006.

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E6j7 TIL that D.W. Griffiths, who made the racist pro-KKK film “The Birth of a Nation”, responded to his critics with subsequent films that preached social justice and the first ever movie about an interracial love story.
XmV8 TIL President Ulysses S. Grant smoked an estimated 12 cigars a day. He also became the first president to die of cancer, only 5 days after finishing his autobiography.
GAAdg TIL that humanities ancestors used to be able to synthesize Vitamin C in their body, but lost the ability due to mutation, analog to other species.
J18oQ TIL Freshwater snails carry a parasitic disease, which infects nearly 250 million people and causes over 200,000 deaths a year. The parasites exit the snails into waters, they seek you, penetrate right through your skin, migrate through your body, end up in your blood and remain there for years.
w8K6 TIL that we have been warned that Iran will have obtained a nuclear bomb “within years” since 1984.